Here I Go Again!

[Yawg]

When dealing with user-generated content, you gotta assume that crap will be made. There's no avoiding it. However, if you know and trust the person you're using levels from, you won't have anything to worry about.

I second this. Despite the potential for abuse, I'd take a full editor over something thats been gimped out of fear any day of the week. The greater control the user is given, the more chances they have to create utter crap. But the more flexibility these tools afford them, the more oppertunities they have to innovate. I'm not advocating hidden traps, invisible walls or the like, but I am offering my support for the most powerful and flexible editing tools we can get.

[Clam]

Oh sure, I know it doesn't seem "right" to deprive designers of options when they build levels. But what you've called "flexibility" is at best redundancy - which will just clutter up the interface for no reason - and potentially much worse.

Believe me, I'd be more than happy to use an editor that allows for such "innovation". As long as it does what I need it to, then it can have as much useless junk on the side as it wants.

[chaos_defrost]

+1 to adding everything you have time for, as long as it doesn't make the core of the program hard to understand. A Lemmings player who finds this program and wants to play user-generated levels has probably also played people's Lemedit/Lemmix/Cheapo levels and thus knows who is likely to produce quality and who is likely to produce STEEL BLOCK GLITCH TRAPZZZ (sadly, my early levels leaned toward the latter, but still).

[Minim]

Wow, this board has really cranked up the replies overnight.

Will you be able to hack a new graphics set or some new skills or is that not possible?

[GuyPerfect]

Sorry, I still don't believe that. Considering the layout of weird invisible stuff leaves a convoluted route to the exit, whereas if it really was unknown and random, it would more than likely block the exit entirely and make the level impossible.

Well, I don't know what to tell you. There is nothing in the level format that even allows for an invisible wall, let alone me selecting where they would go. Trust me, if I knew how to prevent it from happening, I'd be all over it.

- Delete traps that get buried behind terrain when editing, just as you would with terrain.

In Lemmings 2, all terrain is drawn first, then all objects on top of it in the order they're secified in the file. Traps and exits cannot be hidden behind terrain this time around, but objects can obscure other objects, which is what I did with that ten-tonsamajig in the level I made earlier.

Though for what it's worth, I'm not up for making an algorithm that detects whether or not the user is trying to be onery. It's against my religion.

- Disable setting as background for terrain pieces, except for those which were clearly intended to be background objects (polar bears and the like). And preferably make those background-only (i.e. can't be used as terrain) and group them along with the trapdoors and exits to avoid confusion.

It's true that certain presets were intended to be used as background and everything else as true terrain. And I'm certainly interested in preventing magical secret passages by altering the background property of a few choice tiles... I'll probably end up making a built-in list as to which presets in which tribes need to be backgrounds. And if they need to be backgrounds, you can't split them into tiles... I'll think on this one some more.

But allowing it in the editor is just asking for some noob to pick up the editor, find all this new stuff, and make a bunch of "groundbreaking" game-breaking levels.

Game-breaking being the key point there. While I started at this with the idea of giving all possible options to the user, after taking time to think about what can be done, I do agree that certain options can really only be useful to someone who wishes to be a jerk. There's the off chance someone wants to make a "sneaky" set of levels where the whole point is to look for the hidden secrets, but under any other circumstances, such design would be game-breaking.

I personally don't feel that hiding traps falls under this category, however. There are traps in the game that you can't see at all until their activated (Egyptian has a "from the sides" smasher that you can't see) as it is. Though if every level a user makes has a steel tunnel with hidden traps, I'm likely to stop playing that user's levels.

Will you be able to hack a new graphics set or some new skills or is that not possible?

Adding graphics is a cinch, but skills would require reprogramming the game and I haven't even touched that. However, the level editor is designed to work only with the original files that shipped with the game, so any new additions won't be supported. I'm not interested in playing someone's tribute to Hello Kitty during my special Lemmings time of day.

[ccexplore]

Wow, and here I was, thinking I could spend a few hours catching up on TV on my DVR without anything of interest going on in the forums......  Now I take a break from TV and see all this.

So that's what so hard about level.  Great, thanks for spoiling that for me  (no, I still haven't got around to trying it out, told you I'm busy).

Sorry to rant, but I feel quite strongly about this.

Well, everyone's entitled to their opinions.  I have to say in my mind this is a bit of overreaction.  Someone really determined to make "bad" levels can always do so via hex-editing or other such techniques.  I suppose it would be nice to make sure the editor's design does not allow users from accidentally creating such "bad" designs, and there's certainly no need to spend extra work to make the editor supports something unpopular that it can't already do, but I do feel a little offended at the notion of having the editor doing anything beyond that (ie. actively trying to restricting level designs that it can already handle).

And now, let me actually read what people have posted and respond to the specifics:

- Disable setting as background for terrain pieces, except for those which were clearly intended to be background objects (polar bears and the like). And preferably make those background-only (i.e. can't be used as terrain) and group them along with the trapdoors and exits to avoid confusion.

It's true that certain presets were intended to be used as background and everything else as true terrain. And I'm certainly interested in preventing magical secret passages by altering the background property of a few choice tiles... I'll probably end up making a built-in list as to which presets in which tribes need to be backgrounds. And if they need to be backgrounds, you can't split them into tiles... I'll think on this one some more.

Instead of trying to restrict the user, you can mitigate the objection simply by having a way in the editor to show what exactly is background and what exactly is terrain.  For example, a mode that hides all background.  In fact, such a feature is probably useful even ignoring this concern, by allowing the level designer to focus on the parts of the level that matters to the solution.

I suppose I can live with a mode that warns user when they try to use tiles meant for background as terain and vice versa, or at least some default mode that makes such "abuse" harder to come by, but I don't really think we should go as far as trying to censor it outright in the editor.  The best way IMHO to discourage abuse is for the community to throw pie in the face of the level designer (so to speak), not censorship.  And remember that there's always the hex editor.

- Delete traps that get buried behind terrain when editing, just as you would with terrain.

In Lemmings 2, all terrain is drawn first, then all objects on top of it in the order they're secified in the file. Traps and exits cannot be hidden behind terrain this time around, but objects can obscure other objects, which is what I did with that ten-tonsamajig in the level I made earlier.

Though for what it's worth, I'm not up for making an algorithm that detects whether or not the user is trying to be onery. It's against my religion.

Again, an easy way to deal with this is simply to make it impossible to truly hide anything in the editor.  You may recall on my feature list talking about a feature that highlights the trigger areas (ie. the tiles that actually affect lemmings) of objects.  Having such a feature would ensure that such hidden stuff would not survive a brief examination in the level editor, and community flocking would quickly discourage those who dare to abuse.

I'm not interested in playing someone's tribute to Hello Kitty during my special Lemmings time of day.

LOL Though consider that there could always be someone out there who is interested.

More to the point, being able to make your own styles is something that I think will interest level designers, and we've seen this as one of the features where Cheapo is superior over something like Lemmix or LemEdit.  Certainly not a feature for version 1, but don't be too quick in dismissing the possibility.

You can make it difficult without having to make it impossible

That sounds reasonable, although I'd go a step further and say that the main goal should be to prevent accidental bad design, not to actually trying to go out of the way to actively thwart someone who's determined to create bad designs.

Also, I think the scenario of a "n00b" creating tons of abusive levels sounds rather alarmist to me, especially within the community of this forum.  Such a level designer would quickly be ignored like you would a spammer or troll.

[ccexplore]

EDIT:

Eh, having second thoughts about the dirt-steel. I can't think of any reasons to use it except to annoy people. I remember that block at the end of Medieval 5 and how bogus it felt, and I certainly don't want people to do that just because they can.

I'll still code in the option just in case I do need it in the future for whatever reason, but it will be disabled until such a time.

Consider that in LemEdit/Lemmix/CustLemm, there had been cases where steel areas are used as a cheap fix against unintentional backroutes that may otherwise spoil the level.  I suppose this may be less applicable in the tile-based design of L2 levels (it's impossible to speculate on this until we actually have people trying to create custom levels for real), but with that in mind, don't be too quick to dismiss it as a 100% bad thing.  Remember once again that there's always the "show me everything" mitigation--some mode that highlights all steel would quickly reveal the level's true nature.

[GuyPerfect]

Good news! Well, and bad news too, but mostly good news!

I've discovered the dealie with the invisible walls. Turns out it's linked to the location digging tools were used, and only happens under two conditions: 1) the Lemming is below the 160th pixel from the top and 2) the current Tribe is Classic... The real bummer here is that it ALWAYS happens under those circumstances, which means Classic levels can only be one screen tall... Oh well.

Your reiteration of viewing levels with the editor before playing is very reassuring, ccexplore. I mean, you need to use the editor to at least patch them to the game, so it shouldn't be an issue to check the stages for any mysterious use of steel look-alikes or secret background passages/pitfalls. With that in mind, I do think I'll go ahead and give the user full control over what's what in the event they have a reasonable purpose for doing something that's otherwise taboo. And if someone thinks a level is a bit suspicious, they can just turn on the special hilight mode and see exactly what's-what.

[ccexplore]

I've discovered the dealie with the invisible walls. Turns out it's linked to the location digging tools were used, and only happens under two conditions: 1) the Lemming is below the 160th pixel from the top and 2) the current Tribe is Classic... The real bummer here is that it ALWAYS happens under those circumstances, which means Classic levels can only be one screen tall... Oh well.

Good job!  It is a little sad that such a restriction exists in Classic Tribe (perhaps when you get to exploring the game mechanics, you will eventually find out the underlying cause and have a way to change it?), though I guess it really wouldn't be so classic if the level's more than one screen tall.

[Clam]

Oh, so that's the deal with the weird invisible stuff. It just seemed so damned suspicious though...


In response to ccexplore's points:

Someone really determined to make "bad" levels can always do so via hex-editing or other such techniques.

Well, yeah, but here's the thing:

Editing levels in the new editor will be easy. (Hopefully, really easy.)
Editing levels in a hex editor is hard. Really hard.

Anyone who wants to make crazy stuff happen in their levels would have to read up on the level file format and figure out what numbers to put where. Since these people are likely to be new designers, they're unlikely to take this step.

Instead of trying to restrict the user, you can mitigate the objection simply by having a way in the editor to show what exactly is background and what exactly is terrain.  For example, a mode that hides all background.

Assuming you will have to open the editor anyway, then this is a great idea. Especially since DOSBox runs windowed so you can see the level in-game and the "real" level side by side. In fact, this just might be all we need.

I suppose I can live with a mode that warns user when they try to use tiles meant for background as terain and vice versa, or at least some default mode that makes such "abuse" harder to come by, but I don't really think we should go as far as trying to censor it outright in the editor. 

The thing here is, if a polar bear (for example) is in the background in one level, and a terrain piece in another, it's going to cause confusion even if it wasn't intended to be abusive. By forcing it to be one or the other, you gain consistency and avoid potential problems. I don't know if any such inconsistencies exist in the original levels - but if they don't, then we have a good precedent to work from.

Also, I think the scenario of a "n00b" creating tons of abusive levels sounds rather alarmist to me, especially within the community of this forum.  Such a level designer would quickly be ignored like you would a spammer or troll.

Come on, you know what it's like when you're new. You find something that wasn't in the original levels, and you just have to use it. And not all designers are going to read the forums extensively before playing with the editor. Keep in mind that we do need to be careful around newbies to avoid scaring them off - "throwing pie", while being fun at the time, isn't going to help in the long term.



I don't mean to get so uptight about all this. I'm just fed up with levels where the intention is to hide key information from the player. It was bad enough in Lemmings - hidden traps, hidden terrain behind objects, black (= invisible) terrain, fake exits, fake steel, steel on non-steel terrain... heck, this is worth a rant thread of it's own. And now I find out that even worse BS is possible in Lemmings 2. I'm sure you can appreciate my frustration.

[GuyPerfect]

I've taken a moment to work in a feature I'd planned on doing whenever I got around to it. So, obviously, now is the time when I got around to it.



This color-codes every pixel on the screen according to the element type they represent. Yellow is dirt, and grey is steel. It's easy to see at a glance exactly what type of terrain things are.

I will throw in a special pass to specifically hilight traps for those times when they're hidden behind objects (since their non-graphical pixels will still show up as black currently). It'll help the user identify when something's going to snap out at them.

Additionally, I've also prevented Classic levels from being able to be resized vertically.

[Clam]

Forget the terrain textures, I want to play the game in this mode. That's old-school

[namida]

Additionally, I've also prevented Classic levels from being able to be resized vertically.

If the game mechanics doesn't disallow that, don't do it! >_>

[Clam]

Umm... they do.

I've discovered the dealie with the invisible walls. Turns out it's linked to the location digging tools were used, and only happens under two conditions: 1) the Lemming is below the 160th pixel from the top and 2) the current Tribe is Classic... The real bummer here is that it ALWAYS happens under those circumstances, which means Classic levels can only be one screen tall... Oh well.

And by the way - these are more like blocker fields (as I called them earlier) than invisible walls. How do I know? I noticed the following on GuyPerfect's level, in the lower half:
- I couldn't place any blockers.
- I got a basher stuck in the infinite loop of bashing and turning around, without using any blockers.
- I was digging a tunnel down the right-hand side, and the lemmings suddenly walked to one side and started glitch-climbing up the side of the tunnel - as though they had been pushed out by a blocker.

[ccexplore]

Also, I think the scenario of a "n00b" creating tons of abusive levels sounds rather alarmist to me, especially within the community of this forum.  Such a level designer would quickly be ignored like you would a spammer or troll.

Come on, you know what it's like when you're new. You find something that wasn't in the original levels, and you just have to use it.

  I suppose.  But after you use it once or twice and found everyone hating it, would you still do it a third time?  Such cheap novelty wears off quickly.

And more to the point, although I can't say that I've observed the Lemmings community longer than other people, I just really have never observed in the case of LemEdit there ever being some bad epidemic of people resorting to churning out tons of levels with hidden exits, fake objects, and other such "atrocities".  I'd think people who are bothered enough to create levels in the first place are those who truly love the game, and we all know that the enduring qualities of Lemmings are anything but the hidden exits, fake objects, etc.  Maybe someone will sneak it into a levelset one time, but that's about it.

Keep in mind that we do need to be careful around newbies to avoid scaring them off - "throwing pie", while being fun at the time, isn't going to help in the long term.

I was obviously exaggerating.  What would happen of course is that there'd be a "Lemmings 2 Custom Level Review Game", and people would make it very clear that a levelset where all the levels are hidden-exit hunting levels gets lame very quickly, and hopefully the level designer will take that as a sign to try something else, to redeem himself in our eyes or risk having his future levelsets be avoided and ignored by everyone.  This is all I have in mind when I exaggerate and say "throwing pie" and "community flocking".

I don't mean to get so uptight about all this. I'm just fed up with levels where the intention is to hide key information from the player. It was bad enough in Lemmings - hidden traps, hidden terrain behind objects, black (= invisible) terrain, fake exits, fake steel, steel on non-steel terrain... heck, this is worth a rant thread of it's own.

But how many such actual custom levels are we talking about out here?  Clearly, it sounds like you had run into some major source of bad custom levels.  Now you've got me really curious......

And I'd hope that with the editor having the power to reveal all these silliness, a level designer would be smart enough to know that relying solely on such silliness will simply not work for long.